Never let a beancounter call the shots. All they generally really understand is the bottom line and not many of the non-financial elements that contribute to that bottom line. So to "save" money, they reduce programming resources as much as possible, outsource customer service to undertrained foreign call centers, and strangle creativity all to boost that all-sacred bottom line. For them, it's not so much about the money itself; as Terry Pratvhett once noted, the money is how they keep score. That makes beancounters like some sort of toxic gamers.
As for those canaries in a digital coal mine:
"Because, Inferno, when expecting booby traps... Always send the boob in first." ~Megatron, Beast Wars
